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And I’m pretty happy I did it. I have long thought that it’s something I should do while I’m young and healthy, but have never got around to doing it. I tried once back in Canada but fell ill on my appointment day. This time however I was ok. I felt great and I told them I was sick a week ago, but had been feeling better since then. I was a little apprehensive about it, but it turned out to be not so bad.

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel a thing afterwards really, I didn’t feel lightheaded or out of breath at all, I never got woozy or anything, I just went on normally. It was a little sick to see that big bag of my own blood outside of my body, and to feel the warmth of the tube as it rested on my arm. Seeing that blood reminded me of the time I bled from my tonsil stumps when I was 21. I had tonsillectomy and a day or so later started to bleed at night. It poured out, probably half as much as I just donated. It also coagulated really strangely in the cup as I recall… anyways, that’s a pretty gross memory. This blood letting session was much cleaner.

Someone out there will get my blood and it will course through their body as it did mine, which I still think is a really disgusting idea. Maybe I’ll get over that as time goes on.

Since being sick and not really doing anything else otherwise, I’ve seen a lot of the apartment lately. This afternoon I started to feel a bit better, and a bit cabin feverish at the same time. So I decided to go downtown and just wander. It was a pretty nice afternoon and I went all over downtown and then headed to southbank. It’s easy to forget that you’re living in a place that looks like this sometimes. It just becomes what is normal.

Here’s a bad idea… get really sick, so that you can’t really move around very much. Then stay in bed all day, so you have that sick lethargic didn’t-do-anything-all-day feeling. Then watch three episodes of House back to back. Then try to sleep. With your clothes on. I tried this and I ended up tossing and turning all night dreaming of how the people who test blood are trying to cheat you and they’ll just as soon stab you with the disease blood to see if it’s still diseased as actually do the test. My mind went over and over through all the bad things that could come from blood tests… That House show… I don’t think they’re really true to life. I know that will come as a shock, but that’s just my opinion. Anyways, I was really sick this week, and am now just starting to feel a bit better. I still get out of breath pretty easy… which means walking up the hill to my house is sometimes a two step process.

This is a video I took in June some time when I was walking to the Princess Alexandra Hospital. I had my camera set on slow motion video, but didn’t know that the slow mo would be so slow. So, it’s choppy. I wanted to do it again, and use the regular video setting and then speed it up, but given the weird looks I got marching all that way with a camera stuck in people’s faces, I probably won’t. So here it is. People who have been there before will recognize it. [Read more →]

These last weeks have been pretty quiet. It seemed like we took a few weeks to ease back into the rhythm of school, and there are no longer some of the practical sessions. Microbiology has ceased entirely, which is great, since many of us had previous experience with microbiology, and seeing it again doesn’t really do anything to advance the awareness of it. It seemed pretty distant from the actual tasks we’ll be asked for in a clinical setting. With an exception of actually visualizing the need for sterile technique. If you’d never seen how much bacteria can grow from your breath, then I guess it was good for that.

Our PBL topics have taken a turn towards the less definable parts of medicine, recently including teenage pregnancy, abortion and cancer treatments. It seems as though these topics are huge and we are just starting to get into them. It has been a little frustrating to not be able to learn a bunch of really useful things about one topic, since things like teenage pregnancy cover everything from competence to embryology. I suppose that’s the nature of these problems, and why this process is so long. A lot of these topics have required much personal thought and searching. It’s mental preparation to be able to act from strength in the future, I suppose.

On a totally different topic, it has been winter here lately, and while these weeks are some of the sweetest weeks in Canada, it has been cold and rainy here. It’s a different raiiny than I’m used to; it’s not the gloom of Vancouver. Even on the days that it is a bit gloomy, there is hope in knowing that in just a few days it will be glorious again. It has been really good for the last few days. Hopefully that’s the sign that things are starting to turn around. I’m trying to enjoy it now, before it’s unbearably hot again. (Which is kinda cool too.)